The pricing of American options has been widely acknowledged as “a much more intriguing” problem in financial engineering. In this paper, a “convergency-proved” IFE (inverse finite element) approach is introduced to the field of financial engineering to price American options for the...

Two difficulties arise in the estimation of AB models: (i) the criterion function has no simple analytical expression, (ii) the aggregate properties of the model cannot be analytically understood. In this paper we show how to circumvent these difficulties and under which conditions ergodic...

This paper studies alternative distributions for the size of price jumps in the S&P 500 index. We introduce a range of new jump-diffusion models and extend popular double-jump specifications that have become ubiquitous in the finance literature. The dynamic properties of these models are tested...

We propose an efficient method to evaluate callable and putable bonds under a wide class of interest rate models, including the popular short rate diffusion models, as well as their time changed versions with jumps. The method is based on the eigenfunction expansion of the pricing operator....

We show that Australian options are equivalent to fixed or floating strike Asian options and consequently that by studying Asian options from the Australian perspective and vice versa, much can be gained. One specific application of this “Australian approach” leads to a natural dimension...

If a probability distribution is sufficiently close to a normal distribution, its density can be approximated by a Gram/Charlier Series A expansion. In option pricing, this has been used to fit risk-neutral asset price distributions to the implied volatility smile, ensuring an arbitrage-free...

We propose a new algorithm for computing the Greeks in jump-diffusion settings using binomial trees. We further demonstrate that the Greeks for European options converge to the Malliavin Greeks in the continuous time model. Our proposed algorithm is efficient, because the price and the Greeks...

Lévy processes have been successfully applied in the modeling of financial assets. Useful information such as implied volatility, skewness, and risk-preferences can be derived from market option prices. In this paper, we advocate using Esscher conjugate Lévy processes to estimate risk-neutral...

We propose a hypothesis testing procedure to investigate whether the same growth rate distribution is shared by all the firms in a balanced panel or, more generally, whether they share the same functional form for this distribution, without necessarily sharing the same parameters. We apply the...

This paper discusses a series of Monte Carlo experiments designed to evaluate the empirical properties of Heterogeneous-Agent macroeconomic models in the presence of sampling variability. The calibration procedure leads to the welfare analysis being conducted with the wrong parameters. The...